Recent work on “Oracular” systems such as Eliza?
Tariq's comment hints at this, but this is still in some sense a very mainstream idea.

Check out the transcripts for this year's Loebner Prize. The winner (called Tutor) is again making use of Eliza-like deflections. Some of the other candidates try to use seduction (Columbia), or speaking in a flighty or insistent way (like 2017's Rose). 

In all cases, the bots are relying on humans to read meaning into ambiguous or vague statements, which we seem to be hardwired to do. Kind of neat!